Rock Springs Massacre

On Sept. 2, 1885, white coal miners in Rock Springs, Wyoming Territory attacked Chinatown, the part of town where Chinese coal miners lived. Although hundreds of Chinese escaped, the white rioters killed 28 people while burning and looting the houses and shops. All the miners worked at mines owned by the Union Pacific Railroad.

What drove the white miners to commit this kind of violence? What, if anything, had the Chinese done to anger them?

The Chinese had been in America at least since the 1849 California Gold Rush. They accepted lower wages in comparison with what the white miners would accept. This drove wages down for everyone and white workers resented it. In the early 1870s, white workers in San Francisco and Los Angeles threatened the Chinese workers and, in Los Angeles, white people killed 23 Chinese laborers. No charges were ever brought against the murderers.

During the construction of the transcontinental railroad, large numbers of Chinese laborers worked for the Central Pacific Railroad building it from California in the west eastward to meet the rails of the Union Pacific in Utah in 1869. Later, many of the Chinese in Wyoming worked at the Union Pacific mines in railroad towns such as Rock Springs, Evanston, and others. During the 1870s, strikes by white miners in Wyoming caused the company to hire more Chinese miners, which only increased the white miners’ resentment as the company was playing the different groups of miners against each other.

On the day of the attack in 1885, the Sweetwater County sheriff learned of the violence about an hour after it began. He took a special train to Rock Springs but could not find anyone to join him in a posse.

Territorial Governor Francis E. Warren traveled to Rock Springs. To demonstrate that he was unafraid and to help calm the white miners, he left his railroad car several times and made a show of walking back and forth on the depot platform.  

Warren also telegraphed President Grover Cleveland asking for troops to restore order since Wyoming had no territorial militia. At his suggestion, the company sent a slow train the 15 miles from Rock Springs to Green River to rescue the scattered Chinese and give them food, water, and blankets. Meanwhile, the Uinta County sheriff in Evanston grew nervous about the situation in his area, too. Warren could do nothing but travel to Evanston to calm matters.

By this time, most of the Chinese were eager to get out of Wyoming; most from Rock Springs had ended up in Evanston after the violence. Their leader, Ah Say, asked the Union Pacific for railroad tickets and for the two months’ back pay the company owed them. The company refused both requests.

Nearly a week after the killings, troops arrived in Rock Springs and Evanston. Company guards escorted about 600 Chinese, then in Evanston, into boxcars supposedly bound for San Francisco. It wasn’t true; the train steamed to Rock Springs, with Warren and top company officials in a car at the back.

Back in Rock Springs, the company still refused the Chinese any passes to California or back pay. White miners continued to harass them. The company refused to sell them food, threatened evict them from their temporary boxcar homes, and finally threatened to fire and blacklist any Chinese who had not returned to work by Sept. 21. About 60 Chinese left; the rest returned to work.

Sixteen white miners were arrested for the riot, destruction, and murders, but none were ever charged because no witnesses were willing to testify. The official casualty count was 28 Chinese killed, 15 wounded, and all 79 of the Chinatown buildings looted and burned.

Governor Warren’s role in this debacle was mixed. Although he succeeded in calming the atmosphere, thus preventing further violence, he helped trick the Chinese into returning to Rock Springs and he refused to intervene in the matter of their back pay.

Ultimately, the Union Pacific Company got what it wanted: continuing low pay for all miners—and an ongoing supply of coal for its trains.

Collections

General AHC Collections

Vertical files and other materials related to the Rock Springs Massacre and the Chinese experience in Wyoming. Vertical files contain items such as news clippings, booklets, photographs, pamphlets, reports, and more. The materials are typically loose, separate pieces organized in folders and arranged by subject. The name comes from how they are stored: vertically in filing cabinets. 

Francis E. Warren

Republican Francis E. Warren (1844-1929) received an appointment as Wyoming Territorial Governor in February 1885. He was not new to politics. He had served as mayor of Cheyenne, as a member of the territorial senate, and as territorial treasurer. He had also rapidly risen to a successful business position in Wyoming, having acquired control of great areas of land and an important voice in the all-powerful Wyoming Stock Grower's Association. Notwithstanding his prominence, when Democrat Grover Cleveland assumed office as U.S.

Andrew P. Bugas

Eyewitness account dated April 16, 1933, of the Rock Springs Massacre by Andrew P. Bugas. He was born in Austria in 1866. He joined his father to work in coal mines in Pennsylvania. In 1885 he came to Rock Springs where for three-and-one-half years, he worked in No. 1 mine. Later in life he married, ran a saloon, and served in the Wyoming State Legislature.

W.B.D. and Annette Gray

William Bradford Dodge Gray was superintendent of Congregational Missions in Wyoming from 1900 to 1918. He was born in Milbourne, Illinois, in 1846. In 1902, W.B.D Gray married Annette Becher. She was ordained in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in December of 1900, and became pastor of the South Side Congregational Church in Cheyenne. The couple traveled extensively through Wyoming as missionaries. They raised money for their missionary work by slide lectures given to audiences in the East on conditions in Wyoming.

Grace Raymond Hebard

Grace Raymond Hebard (1861-1936) worked as a professor and librarian at the University of Wyoming. She researched the history of the American West and had an interest in the Oregon Trail and Native American life. In addition to her success in academia, she was the first woman to practice law in the state of Wyoming and eventually appointed the first vice president of the National Society of Women Lawyers. Her papers include her correspondence, scrapbooks, manuscripts, and transcripts, among others.

Robert Bartlett Rhode

Robert Bartlett Rhode was born and raised in central Wyoming. He attended the University of Wyoming and graduated with a degree in journalism. Rhode was a reporter and editor for many Wyoming newspapers and was a professor of journalism at the University of Colorado, University of Southern California, and University of Denver. His first two books were about photography. He wrote Booms and Busts on Bitter Creek: A History of Rock Springs in 1987 after he had retired.

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